Anapol Weiss Shareholder Joel Feldman was recently interviewed by PHL17 on their morning show in a segment, Local Dad Creates New Lesson Plan to End Distracted Driving. Joel speaks regularly at schools nationwide on how to recognize and overcome distracted driving, often to high schoolers. He noticed that most students say they have seen their parents drive distracted. That was the motivation to launch a new initiative with his non-profit EndDD (End Distracted Driving) to combat distracted driving.
EndDD, working together with Safe Roads Alliance, created a curriculum program for elementary schools with grade-specific lesson plans featuring the cartoon caricature Sam the Meercat. Sam teaches children how to recognize distracted driving by their parents or guardians, and empowers them to do something about it. see something, address the problem, and make an action plan together. To develop the curriculum, Joel and EndDD consulted educational content developers and child psychologists to ensure the content is useful and consumable by children.
“Kids are disproportionately affected by distracted driving at three times the rate of any other age group,” Joel explained. When parents drive distracted with their kids in the car, they are not only exposing them to risk, but they are teaching their children that it’s OK to drive while distracted. “Moms and dads are not getting it,” Joel said. Child-to-parent intervention is going to be very important in getting parents to put their phones down.
The curriculum program by End Distracted Driving is free and has been tested in several schools. To introduce the lesson plans at your school, visit enddd.org.